I have enjoyed the professional growth opportunities I have had during my time pursing my

Bachelor of Arts in special education.

During my student teaching I was able to take part in a conference on the Common Core State

standards for math and ELA. During the conference, I also learned about the Common Core Essential

Elements that are designed to be performance based and used with students with significant cognitive

challenges.

In Washington State we use the Common Core State standards and it was very informative to

have a breakdown of what they mean and ways to apply them in lessons. As a future special education

teacher, I found the information about the Common Core Essential Elements especially helpful for

differentiation. If I have students who are below grade level or if am working with a student who has

cognitive challenges, I can look at those particular standards and compare them with the Common Core

State standards to decide what standard works best for each student.

Learning more about the standards and their meanings has helped make it easier to incorporate

them into my lessons and provide meaningful lessons for the students. It has also been very interesting

to see how it helps grade level teams and teachers have the students learning similar skills. I feel that is

very beneficial to a student if they must transfer classes or schools during the year.

I believe reading is such an important skill and I have been very interested in learning how to

teach reading comprehension skills. I have enjoyed learning about reading comprehension strategies in

the WGU Language Arts Instruction and Intervention course. I have also attended webinars on guided

reading and read books about different reading comprehension theories such as the Preview, Question,

Read, Reflect, Recite, and Review (PQ4R) method. I have been able to teach students to apply strategies

such as the one mentioned, using context clues and inference to increase their comprehension during
my student teaching. My edTPA project was related to improving a student’s reading comprehension

level.

During my special education placement while student teaching I was able to collaborate with my

host teacher in updating the IEP for the student I worked with for my edTPA project. We went through

each goal and whether it was achieved or needed to be updated or changed. Not only did this give me a

better understanding of the student, It helped to use the skills I had learned about in the

Psychoeducational Assessment Practices and IEP Development/Implementation WGU course to help

design and effective IEP that would help the student achieve valuable goals during the year. I was able

to write a goal on my own for the student and present it at the IEP meeting which helped me prepare

for Leading or just being part of IEP meetings in my future career.

I have used TeachersPayTeachers to help find resources to supplement my lesson planning for

specific WGU courses and during student teaching. An example of this would be using a chart with

pictures of growth stages of a sunflower made by another teacher for the students to label in the right

order. Browsing the sight has also given me ideas to create my own materials. During student teaching I

purchased a game for the student to use as a hands-on supplement during a fraction lesson.

During my special education placement, I was able to work with an ELL student. I enjoyed

differentiating instruction for him and was pleased with the progress he made in understanding and

using his English language skills. Because of this experience, I plan to pursue a Master of Arts in English

Language Learning through WGU. This degree will allow me to grow as a teacher learning more content

knowledge and skills to become certified with the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages

(TESOL) International Association.